Knife skills and life skills

Michelle knocked on our door this afternoon with a confession and a request: she’d been living on takeout and frozen meals for months, and could I please teach her how to meal prep without making it feel like a chore? Two hours later, our kitchen counter looked like a rainbow of chopped vegetables, and we’d somehow covered everything from knife techniques to career transitions to why her last relationship ended.

Knife skills and life skills

Turns out teaching someone to julienne carrots creates the perfect environment for the kind of honest conversation that usually only happens on long car rides. She told me about the promotion she’s been afraid to apply for, and I found myself sharing things about nursing school that I hadn’t even told Jake. There’s something about working with your hands that makes the deeper stuff easier to talk about.

The final reveal—six days of lunches that actually look appetizing.

Six glass containers later, she had a week’s worth of actual lunches, and I had a reminder that some of the best teaching moments happen when you’re not trying to teach anything at all. She’s coming back next weekend to tackle dinner prep—apparently I’ve created a monster.